A First Step Toward Dr. Smartphone

If researchers have their way, your smartphone could one day eliminate the time spent in doctors waiting rooms, and perhaps even tell you whether you have cancer.

A team of researchers from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science of Technology (KAIST) showed that touch screen technology can be used to detect biomolecular chemicals like what has been done in many modern medical labs.

While being used, touch screen devices such as smartphones and PDAs can measure electronic charges of biochemical molecules such as proteins and DNA.

Touch screens can recognize the existence and the concentration of DNA molecules placed on them, Korean experts reported in the German journal Angewandte Chemie.

“We have confirmed that (touch screens) are able to recognize DNA molecules with nearly 100 per cent accuracy just as large, conventional medical equipment can and we believe equal results are possible for proteins,” said Hyun-gyu Park, who led the study with his colleague Byong-yeon Won.

“There are proteins known in the medical world like the ones used to diagnose liver cancer, and we would be able to see the liver condition of the patient,” he suggested.

The KAIST scientists said that they are developing a type of film with reactive materials that can identify specific biochemicals.

They hope that future proceedings may lead to development of touch screen devices that can also recognize different biomolecular materials and report them to the owner and even their physicians.

Since nobody would put blood or urine on a touch screen, the sample would be placed on a strip, which would then be fed into the phone or a module attached to the phone through what Park called an "entrance point."

There are no details yet on a prospective timetable for making the phone a diagnostic tool, however.